The dear sun sees that the harvest is done; so colder gleam his last autumnal rays. But with warm light glows the peasant’s taper--burning before the pictured form of the Mother of God.
--Transl. by W. R. S. Ralston, in The Contemporary Review, 1874 (vol. xxiii.).
THE FOREST
IN MEMORY OF PÚSHKIN
What does the silent wood Dream of so pensively? What is the sorrow that Rides in its mystery?
Why dost thou, Knightly One, Under its charm’s spell, Head undefended Hold ’gainst the wind-stroke,--
Standing there shamedly Letting the storm-clouds As they pass momently Burst on thee savagely?
Thy helmet of green leaves Bound fastly together Is whirled from thee far off And scattered to dust;
Thy boughs, as a mantle falls, Lie all around thee; Thou standest ashamedly, Forced to submit thee.
Where hath vanished now Speech that was mighty, Strength that was prouder than All a king’s bravery?
A night there hath been for thee, A calm night within which Thou heardest the nightingale’s Deluge of song--
A day there hath been for thee Triumphant, forgetless-- A friend and an enemy Sought thy cool freshness;
’T was late in the evening, And loud blew the storm-blast Of him that was speaking Unto thy detractor.
His wrath drove the clouds off That round thee had gathered, His love clung around thee Like wind-gusts, but warmer.
Thou said’st to the other, With voice that changed loudly, “Go, fall back beyond me! Go, leave me in peace!”
That voice of his dizzied, As tone on tone sounded; Thy very depths trembled, Their stoutest trunks reeling.
Then, startled from silence, To life thou awakest; A whistling of tempest Re-echoed throughout thee;
’T is the cry of the wood-sprite, A witch’s note shrilling, Until the loud rumble Is borne away seaward.
Where now all thy glory Of verdure and leaf? Thou ’st put on dark clothing Of rain-mist and grief;
Wild art thou and silent, But, when the wind quickens, Thy plaint sadly peals out For him lost untimely.
And so, thou dark forest, Life-long hast thou harassed The Knightly, the Noble, To combat for thee.
Against thee prevailed not Those stronger than thou art; Life’s autumn in him, though, Seemed cruelly short.
The woods know in dreamland That forces of evil Their malice did spend on Who least had deserved it:
From off Knightly shoulders A head had been struck-- Not by a hero’s hand, But by a recreant.
--Transl. by I. H. Harrison, in The Anglo-Russian Literary Society, No. 16.
BETRAYED BY A BRIDE
Warm the summer sun in heaven, But for me no heat is given! Frozen is the very heart’s blood, Through the bride that played me false.
Grief’s black pall hath fallen o’er me, On my sorrow-bowed-down head: Mortal anguish tears my soul, and From this body would it break.
Neighbours asked have I to help me; No man gave me aught but laughter; Then, to the grave of either parent-- Neither heard the voice I called with.
Light then changed for me to darkness, Senseless on the ground I lay, Dull the night, until a tempest Roused me from the tombstone cold.
Raged the storm--a horse I saddled, Bent on riding--God knows where-- Life is heartless toil to laugh at, Man’s fate evil alone to share.
--Transl. by I. H. Harrison, in The Anglo-Russian Literary Society, No. 16.
THE MOWER
I can’t understand it, I can’t make it out-- Yet why I can’t see How it all came about? In an unlucky day, In an ill hour, alack, I came into this world With no shirt to my back! Yet my grand-dad’s broad shoulders Are mine, as you see; And my mother’s deep chest; In my cheeks flowing free Burns the blood of my sire, Like milk set afire By dawn’s crimson light; And my locks lie in clusters As black as the night. Yet, whatever I do-- Oh, it never goes right! In an unlucky day, In an ill hour, alack, I came into this world With no shirt to my back!
There’s darling Grunyúsha, The Stárosta’s daughter-- Well, all through the spring Did I patiently court her; But he, the old churl, Was finely put out! To whom has he planned That he ’ll marry the girl? Oh, I can’t understand How it all came about. Does he think, the old ass, I was after his money? Let him stick to his brass If he give me my honey-- ’T is for her that I pine. Oh, her face is bright And as rosy as sunrise, Her rounded cheeks mellow, And the flash of her eyes Might drive a young fellow Clean out of his wits.
Ah, ’t was only last night That she wept so for me, But her tears were in vain. For her dad said downright That it never could be. Shall I never again From my sorrow be free? Come, I ’ll buy a new scythe, And I ’ll sharpen it well, Aye, its edge I will whet, Ere I bid a farewell To my own native place. Nay, Grúnya, don’t fret, Don’t worry, dear maid. Though keen is the blade, I ’ll not cut myself down; Good-bye, little town. You, hard parent, good-bye! To a land far away Will the young mower hie. Down the Don’s bank I ’ll stray Till I reach the quayside, Where the suburbs stand gay And the Steppe stretches wide. There, wherever I glance, The tall plume-grass is blown. O Steppe, thou, my own, How thy fertile expanse Lies green on each hand, So free and so vast, Till it reaches at last To the Black Sea’s far strand! I have come as thy guest, But I come not alone, I have brought thee a friend, One, my closest and best. See, my sharp scythe is here, As myself he is dear. Oh, from end to far end, What a joy it will be To wander with him O’er the Steppe’s grassy sea!
Swish, work away shoulders; Swing arms to and fro, While cool on my face The light southern winds blow, Refreshing and rippling The Steppe’s endless space. Now, scythe, hum a song, Flash in circles thy blade; How the long grass-ranks fall As the steel moves along! O ye poor blossoms all, Your heads are low-laid! Ye must dry up and fade In the straight swathes of grass As my young heart, alas, Withers up for a maid,-- And I languish for Grúnya! I ’ll rake up the hay Till so high my stack stands That the wife of the Cossack Must pay with both hands. I shall sew up my pocket, My treasure to guard, Then, home I ’ll betake me, To the Stárosta say: “Though tears could not make thee Give Grúnya away, Thou art not so hard But my good pieces may.”
--Transl. by Mrs. Rosa Newmarch, in The Anglo-Russian Literary Society, No. 30.
Nikoláy Vasílevich Gógol (--Yanóvski). (1809-1852.)
Gógol was born in the Government of Poltáva, in Little-Russia, and was educated at home up to his twelfth year. His father was a landed proprietor of more than ordinary culture, who had a private theatre at his estate, on which were played Little-Russian comedies, some his own. His grandfather had held an important post with the Zaporóg Cossacks, and being an excellent story-teller, had imbued his grandson with the spirit of the recent Cossack past. At the Gymnasium, Gógol evinced little interest in his studies, but devoted himself with enthusiasm to drawing and to the theatre which he himself created for his schoolmates. He even then composed some comedies and edited a manuscript periodical. After graduation he went to St. Petersburg in search of some occupation, but found himself unfit for any work. He also tried literature, and in 1829 appeared his romantic tale _Hans Küchelgarten_. It was so severely criticised that Gógol bought up the whole edition and committed it to the flames. He busied himself with the history of Little-Russia, and shortly after he wrote his beautiful _Evenings on the Farm near the Dikánka_, in which the idealisation of the past and of his native country is already tempered by realism. These _Evenings_ at once made him known, and he became intimate with Zhukóvski and Púshkin. He dreamed of devoting himself to history, but prolonged labour was distasteful to him, and he did not go beyond collecting material for his Little-Russian epic, _Tarás Búlba_. He really obtained a professorship at the university, but his professional career was a failure. Instead, he brought out a series of admirable stories, such as _Old-fashioned Landed Proprietors_, _The Nose_, _The Phaeton_, _The Mantle_, and his comedies, of which the _Revizór_ has remained a classic in the Russian repertoire. He was now completely launched into naturalism, and was at once recognized by the critic Byelínski (see p. 205), as forming a new school in literature. A few years later he gave to the world the first part of the _Dead Souls_, in which he reached the highest point of his artistic development. The plot of the story is simple: an unscrupulous ex-official travels about the country to buy up peasants, that in reality are dead but before the Government are still accounted alive until the following census and are subject to taxes; by nominally transferring them to his own estate, he is able to mortgage them at the rate of three hundred roubles for each “soul.” This plot served Gógol as a thread on which to string his different types of people. In 1836 Gógol went abroad, and slowly succumbed to a species of melancholia, which showed itself in an increased tendency to mysticism. This led him to burn the greater part of what was to form the second book of the _Dead Souls_, and to practice self-chastisement.
In English translation have appeared: _The Portrait_, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine and in Living Age, 1847; _Home Life in Russia_, by a Russian Noble (a literary forgery), 2 vols., London, 1854; _Cossack Tales_, translated by G. Tolstoy, London, [1860]; _St. John’s Eve and Other Stories_, translated by Miss I. F. Hapgood, New York, [1886], and London, 1887; _Taras Bulba_, by I. F. Hapgood, New York, [1886], (Lovell’s Library, No. 1016), and London, 1887; _Tchitchikoff’s Journey; or, Dead Souls_, by I. F. Hapgood, New York, [1886], and London, 1887; also _Dead Souls_, 1887 and 1888, and _Taras Bulba_, 1887 and 1888, published by Vizetelly; _A May Evening_, in Cosmopolitan, vol. iii.; _The Cloak_, in Short Stories, 1891, and (with _The Portrait_ and _Old-fashioned Farmers_) in _Wayward Dosia_, by Gréville, Chicago, 1891; _Inspector General, or, Revizór_, translated by A. A. Sykes, London, 1892, 1893; _The Inspector_, a comedy, translated by T. Hart Davies, London, 1892; _On Christmas Eve_, translated by F. Volkhovsky, in Free Russia, vol. x., No. 12; _Marriage_ and _A Madman’s Diary_, in the _Humour of Russia_, by E. L. Voynich, London and New York, 1895; extracts from _The Inspector_, and from _Mirgorod_, translated by I. F. Hapgood, are given in the Library of the World’s Best Literature.
THE DNIEPER
Wonderful is the Dnieper in quiet weather when softly and smoothly he hurries his full waters by forests and hills. He neither rustles, nor thunders. You look at him, and you do not know whether his majestic breadth is in motion, or not, and it looks as if he were all cast of glass and as if his blue, mirrored path, measureless in breadth and endless in length, meandered and wound over the wide green world. The hot sun then joyfully looks down from his height and plunges his beams in the coolness of the glassy waters, and the woods of the shore are brightly reflected therein. Green-locked ones! They crowd together with the field flowers to the brink, and bending over look into the water, and do not get tired looking at their bright image, and smile to it, and greet it, shaking their branches. They dare not look into the middle of the Dnieper; none but the sun and the blue sky look upon it; rarely a bird flies to the middle of the Dnieper. Proud one! There is not a river in the world like him.
Wonderful, too, is the Dnieper in a warm summer night, when all is asleep,--man, and beast, and bird,--and God alone majestically surveys heaven and earth and majestically waves His garment. From the garment fall stars; stars burn and gleam over the world, and all together are reflected in the Dnieper. The Dnieper holds them all in his murky lap; not one of them will escape him, unless it be dimmed in heaven. The black forest, weighted down by sleeping ravens, and anciently disrupted mountains hang down over him and attempt to cover him with their long shadows. In vain! There is nothing in the world that could cover the Dnieper. Ever blue, he spreads his gentle floods in the night as in the day, and may be seen as far as the human eye can see. Proceeding in his voluptuous course and hugging the shore in the coolness of the night, he leaves behind him a silvery streak which flashes like the blade of a Damascus sabre, but the blue one again falls asleep. Even then the Dnieper is wonderful, and there is no river like him in the whole world!
But when the grey clouds pass like mountains over the sky, the black forest shakes to its roots, the oaks crack, and the lightnings, piercing through the clouds, at once illumine the whole world,--then the Dnieper is terrible! The mounds of water thunder as they beat against the mountains, and with a splash and groan they rush back, and weep, and lose themselves in the distance. Thus grieves an old Cossack mother as she leads her son to the army: in his best spirits and boldly he rides forth on his black charger, his arms akimbo, his cap poised jauntily; but she sobs and runs after him, seizes him by his stirrup, catches his bridle, and wrings her hands, and is dissolved in bitter tears.
THE REVIZÓR